As portable electronic devices become more compact, and the number of functions performed by a given device increase, it has become a significant challenge to design a user interface that allows users to easily interact with a multifunction device. This challenge is particularly significant for handheld portable devices with touch-sensitive displays, which have much smaller screens than desktop or laptop computers. This situation is unfortunate because the user interface is the gateway through which users receive not only content, but also responses to user actions or behaviors, including user attempts to access a device's features, tools, and functions. Some portable communication devices (e.g., mobile telephones, sometimes called mobile phones, cell phones, cellular telephones, and the like) have resorted to adding more pushbuttons, increasing the density of push buttons, overloading the functions of pushbuttons, or using complex menu systems to allow a user to access, store and manipulate data. These conventional user interfaces often result in complicated key sequences and menu hierarchies that must be memorized by the user.
Many conventional user interfaces, such as those that include physical pushbuttons, are also inflexible. This may prevent a user interface from being configured and/or adapted by either an application running on the portable device or by users. When coupled with the time consuming requirement to memorize multiple key sequences and menu hierarchies, and the difficulty in activating a desired pushbutton, such inflexibility is frustrating to most users.
Recently, portable electronic devices have been developed that support the use of emoji characters. Emoji characters are often used in web forums, email messages, instant messages (e.g., SMS text messages), notes, and on-line games. A large and growing number of emoji characters exist. But it is quite cumbersome to display, organize, and use a large number of emoji characters in existing portable electronic devices with small display screens.
Accordingly, there is a need for portable electronic devices with touch screen displays that have more transparent and efficient user interfaces for using emoji characters. Such interfaces allow tasks involving emoji characters to be performed faster and more efficiently by users, thereby conserving power and increasing the time between battery charges in portable electronic devices. In addition, such interfaces increase the effectiveness of and user satisfaction with portable electronic devices.